Salmon Announces Hiatus from UFC

Sean Salmon, fresh off of a loss to Alan Belcher at UFC 71, announced a temporary hiatus from the UFC via his column on UFC Junkie earlier today.

Salmon has decided to take the break in order to work on his overall game and improve by fighting in smaller promotions before he completes the final fight on his UFC contract:

My manager, Ken Pavia, has spoken with Joe Silva (the UFC’s matchmaker), who gave us some options with which to work. Ken and I spoke at length and came to this decision: I am leaving the last fight on my contract with the UFC for a later date and taking a “release” to fight for other organizations.

My initial thought is that it will take 2-4 fights and 6-8 months before I am back to normal; however, I know how good I am and will not return until I am confident that everything is worked out. I believe that I can become great, but all I have proven is that I am a long way from that. My physical training for that fight was perfect, but perhaps I neglected the mental preparation, or the focus, or my gameplan or my visualization. Either way, something went very wrong, and I will lose sleep until it is solved.